On Tuesday, which marked what felt like Day 1,000,000 of Donald Trump’s feud with the National Football League, the president asked a surprisingly pertinent question on Twitter: “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag, and Country? Change tax law!” For Trump, it was just another day at the office, threatening to use the power of the federal government to sink his enemies. But for Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner who might be the one person on Earth more reviled than Trump, it was a moment that clearly sent shivers down his spine. While the league gave up its tax-exempt status in 2015—a largely symbolic move that allowed it to stop filing yearly tax forms disclosing the salaries of executives like Goodell—it continues to enjoy a plethora of other tax breaks, like the ones allowing teams to finance stadiums using billions in taxpayer dollars. Its owners also stand to benefit significantly from the call to slash the pass-through tax rate to 25 percent.

Although it seems wildly unlikely that Trump’s forthcoming tax-reform plan will actually crack down on the N.F.L.’s tax breaks, Goodell was not about to leave things to chance. Within hours, the commissioner put out a press release saying, “Like many of our fans, we believe that everyone should stand for the National Anthem. . . . We want to honor the flag and our country, and our fans expect that of us.” While claiming to “also care deeply” about players and “their opinions and concerns about critical social issues,” Goodell wrote that the N.F.L. “need[s] to move past this controversy” and has “worked to develop a plan” to do so that will presumably involve benching, fining, or, as the president of the United States has demanded, firing the “son of a bitch” exercising his right to protest. Said plan will be reviewed at the league’s meeting next week.

This is obviously a huge about-face from Goodell’s comment back in September that the president’s call to fire players taking a knee was “divisive” and “demonstrate[d] an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players.” It was also a departure from the clip the league aired September 24—currently pinned to Goodell’s Twitter timeline!—which called for “unity.” If you’re struggling to account for the change of heart, please try to understand that in the hearts and minds of N.F.L. officials, tax breaks —and the mere suggestion of taking them away— rank a lot higher than things like civil liberties (and degenerative brain disease).

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As you may have heard, the Trump administration and the G.O.P. are attempting to overhaul the tax code, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished in more than 30 years because it’s very, very difficult. Making it even harder is the fact that the president is unable to refrain from regularly engaging in petty squabbles, even when they threaten his agenda. The most recent example is his fight with Senator Bob Corker, which began with Trump claiming that Corker “begged” for his endorsement and decided not to run for re-election after failing to secure it, and ended, to date, with him mocking Corker for being short. Because the G.O.P.’s plan to pass a tax bill through reconciliation means it cannot afford to lose the support of more than two Republican senators, Trump’s Twitter tantrum wasn’t just ill-advised because it made him look like a deranged Real Housewife. It was also unwise because it raises the odds of him closing out 2018 with nary a legislative accomplishment. (The fact that Trump’s best Senate bud, Rand Paul, is also unlikely to support any bill that adds to the deficit makes the situation even more perilous.)

Unsurprisingly, given his divorce from reality, Trump believes his feud with Corker poses no obstacle to passing tax reform. Asked by reporters Tuesday if the flamewar could hurt the bill’s prospects, Trump said, “I don’t think so. We’re well on our way. The people of this country want tax cuts. They want lower taxes. People want to see massive tax cuts. I’m giving the largest tax cuts in the history of this country. In addition to that, there’ll be reform.” He added that “we’ll be adjusting [the plan] a little bit over the next few weeks to make it even stronger” but did not detail which parts of the plan Republicans will tweak to take it from widely reviled to “very, very popular.”

. . . Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler does too. Speaking to Bloomberg on Tuesday, the University of Chicago professor said that the president’s “ratio of certitude to knowledge is nearing record highs,” which is economist-speak for I literally put more faith in a plastic bag filled with half-empty bottles of self-tanner than this guy. Discussing the historic stock-market run, Thaler said it makes no sense to him. “We seem to be living in the riskiest moment of our lives, and yet the stock market seems to be napping. I admit to not understanding it. I don’t know about you, but I’m nervous, and it seems like when investors are nervous, they’re prone to being spooked.” Yet, Thaler said, “Nothing seems to spook [this] market,” and if the highs are based on expectations for tax reform, “surely investors should have lost confidence that that was going to happen.”

“The Republican leadership does not seem to be interested in anything remotely bipartisan,” he went on, “and they need unanimity within their caucus, which they don’t have. And the president’s strategy of systematically insulting the votes he needs doesn’t seem to be optimizing anything I can think of, but maybe he’s a deeper thinker than me.”

White House says it’ll have to “agree to disagree” re: Trump having no idea what he’s talking about

“The people of this country want tax cuts, they want lower taxes. We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office. In fact, the U.S. is not the highest-taxed nation in the world by a long shot; in reality, when compared to the several dozen countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, it’s somewhere in the middle. But for the Trump administration, facts are about as important as hiring people who are actually qualified for their jobs, which led to this exchange between a reporter and White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders:

Trey Yingst: “The president repeated this claim in the Oval Office today, saying we are the highest-taxed nation in the world. Why does the president keep saying this? It’s not true overall.”
Sarah Sanders: “We are the highest-taxed—corporate tax in the developed economy. That’s a fact.”
T.Y.: “But that’s not what the president said.”
S.S.: “That’s what he’s talking about. We are the highest-corporate-taxed country in the developed economies across the globe.”
T.Y.: “So that’s accurate. But the president keeps repeating this claim that we are the highest-taxed nation.”
S.S.: “We are the highest-taxed corporate nation, that’s—”
T.Y.: “That’s not what he said. He said we are the highest-taxed nation in the world.”
S.S.: “The highest-taxed corporate nation, that seems pretty consistent to me. Sorry, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.”

Elsewhere!

The IMF is catching up to the prospect that Trump won’t deliver tax cuts (Business Insider)